Lindsey Graham(R-SC) not only became the latest Republican to jump into the 2016 presidential race, he also became the latest Republican to signal strong support for deep Social Security cuts.

"Washington's failure to do the hard but right thing has put Social Security and Medicare in jeopardy," Graham said during his speech on Monday. "As my generation retires both programs are on track to go bust. We're living longer and fewer workers are supporting more retirees. That's unsustainable, everybody knows it, but not everybody will admit it. We have to fix entitlement programs to make sure people who need the benefits the most receive them. That's going to require determined presidential leadership."

Those statements fall roughly in line with House Republicans move to block routine fund transfers between the Social Security Disability Fund and the Social Security retirement fund as a way to leverage cuts to the program.

In April, Christie rolled out a set of entitlement reform changes including raising the retirement age and cutting benefits based on income. Most of the GOP field who have weighed in, except for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, said something to that effect was a good idea.

Graham specifically described how he and his sister Darlene benefited on Social Security while growing up.

"I know from personal experience how important these programs are to the lives of millions of Americans. As Darlene mentioned, we lost our parents when I was a young man and she was in middle school. We depended on Social Security benefits to survive. I've been fortunate," Graham continued. "I've done better than I've ever dreamed. If I and others like me have to take a little bit less and pay a little more to help those who need it most, so be it. And younger people, you may just have to work a little bit longer. As president I'll gladly do what it takes to save a program that once saved my family."

]]>Economic and Social JusticeTue, 02 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0400GOP Assault on Social Security Could be 'Death Sentence' for Nation's Disabledhttp://www.pdamerica.org/component/k2/item/401-gop-assault-on-social-security-could-be-death-sentence-for-nation-s-disabled
http://www.pdamerica.org/component/k2/item/401-gop-assault-on-social-security-could-be-death-sentence-for-nation-s-disabled

The claim that either the old-age or disability trust funds has run dry is 'one of the hoariest lies in the conservatives' playbook.'

Republican opposition to a plan that would shore up a critical government safety-net program amounts to a new front in the GOP's class war and could equal a "death sentence" for many poor recipients, defenders of Social Security said this week.

The White House has proposed shifting money between two Social Security accounts in order to avert deep cuts in disability payments—specifically, reallocating a small portion of the Social Security payroll tax from its old-age account to disability for five years—as has been done numerous times in the past.

The AARP and other elder advocacy groups support the strategy, which would extend by 17 years the life of the disability reserve, currently projected to be exhausted by the end of 2016, according to acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration Carolyn Colvin.

And it would save lives, she added. "I don’t want to be dramatic, but I've worked with this population my whole career," Colvin said at a Senate Budget Committee hearing held Wednesday. Cutting already paltry disability benefits, she declared, would "give them a death sentence."

Republicans oppose the practice of shifting funds. On the first day of the new GOP-controlled Congress, the U.S. House passed a measure making it more difficult to move funds between separate accounts maintained by the Social Security Administration.

But failure to allow the reshuffling would "lay the groundwork for a 19 percent cut in disability benefits," according to a report (pdf) issued Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). "That’s a horribly devastating cut for individuals—most of whom are in their 50's and in poor health—to absorb beginning next year. In fact, since most disability recipients receive barely $1,200 a month, a cut of nearly 20 percent could mean the difference between affording food, medicine, clothing or paying bills. It is an unspeakable option and one that we are determined to prevent."

What's more, the move is "a cynical attempt to divide the senior population from the disability community," charged the report.

Analyst Richard Eskow, a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, describedthe push as "a new front" in the what he dubbed a "Republican Class War."

"They didn’t say they were conducting a class war, of course," he wrote of Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee. "Instead, they claimed that they were concerned about the future financial stability of the Social Security disability program. They’re expressing that concern by blocking an adjustment between trust funds that would restore it to financial health, something previous Congresses have done 11 times in the past."

In a scathing indictment published Wednesday, LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzick blasted the logic behind the GOP's efforts.

"Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) not only displayed a shocking level of ignorance of Social Security and the disability program, but offered no solutions whatsoever to the looming crisis—which he repeatedly mischaracterized," Hiltzick wrote. "Enzi also trotted out one of the hoariest lies about Social Security in the conservatives' playbook: the claim that there's no money in either the old-age or disability trust fund."

He continued:

[T]his assertion is nothing but an attempt to cheat working Americans of the benefits they've paid for. The trust funds hold trillions of dollars of U.S. Treasury bonds bought and paid for by payroll taxes collected from American workers since 1983; these transfers have been certified, in writing, every year by U.S. treasury secretaries and other cabinet members, Republican and Democrat, and accepted by Congress. If the money's gone, they should all go to jail—but you won't hear that said by Enzi or his cronies.

The only way the money can be judged "spent" is if Enzi and the rest of Congress vote to cut the benefits workers already have paid for. That's what he seems to be plotting.

Progressives charge that this fight is about much more than an obscure rule change or account transfer. In an email to supporters sent Wednesday night, Sen.Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) lambasted the GOP's "ideological war on our most important national safety net."

And Sanders echoed Warren's call. "Republicans are manufacturing a phony crisis in Social Security in order to cut the earned benefits of millions of the most vulnerable people in this country," he said. "The American people won’t let them get away with it."

Sanders, for his part, has proposed "scrapping the cap that allows multi-millionaires to pay a much smaller percentage of their income into Social Security than the middle class." He claims that increasing the size of that cap could bolster funding for the program past 2060.

Currently, the amount of earnings that are subject to the payroll tax each year is capped at $118,500. Income above that level is not subject to the tax, which means a Wall Street CEO making $20 million, for instance, only pays into the fund on the first $118,500 of income.

As Nicole Woo of the Center for Economic & Policy Research noted at The Hill, this means that as of this week, "the top 1 percent of American workers finish[ed] paying their Social Security payroll taxes for the year."

Woo concluded: "As the House and Senate continue to debate the merits of changes to Social Security, raising or eliminating the payroll tax cap should be a leading contender. After all, what other option wipes out over two-thirds of the program's projected shortfall, avoids both benefit cuts and middle-class tax increases and is supported by a wide majority of Americans?"

As Eskow wrote, "Inequality is our era’s gravest economic challenge. When it comes to meeting that challenge, Social Security isn’t a problem; it’s part of the solution."

]]>Economic and Social JusticeFri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500'Hostage-Takers': Republicans Go After Social Security on Very First Dayhttp://www.pdamerica.org/component/k2/item/367-hostage-takers-republicans-go-after-social-security-on-very-first-day
http://www.pdamerica.org/component/k2/item/367-hostage-takers-republicans-go-after-social-security-on-very-first-day

Advocacy groups vow to fight back against what they believe is a preliminary "stealth attack" that portends a wider assault on a program that makes survival possible for millions of vulnerable Americans

An attack by the Republican Party on the nation's Social Security program took less than one full working day. Included in a new set of rules passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday was a new measure making it more difficult to move funds between separate accounts maintained by the Social Security Administration. A seemingly technical provision on the surface, critics says it puts millions of disabled and elderly Americans at risk and sets the stage for further attacks aimed at the wider program.

According to Hiltzik:

The rule hampers an otherwise routine reallocation of Social Security payroll tax income from the old-age program to the disability program. Such a reallocation, in either direction, has taken place 11 times since 1968, according to Kathy Ruffing of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

But it's especially urgent now, because the disability program's trust fund is expected to run dry as early as next year. At that point, disability benefits for 11 million beneficiaries would have to be cut 20%. Reallocating the income, however, would keep both the old-age and disability programs solvent until at least 2033, giving Congress plenty of time to assess the programs' needs and work out a long-term fix.

The procedural rule enacted by the House Republican caucus prohibits the reallocation unless it's accompanied by "benefit cuts or tax increases that improve the solvency of the combined trust funds," as paraphrased by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.In practical terms, the advocacy committee says, that makes the reallocation impossible; it mandates either benefit cuts across the board, which aren't politically palatable, or a payroll tax increase, which isn't palatable to the GOP.

In response to approval of the new rule, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) chastised Republicans in the House.

"The GOP is inventing a Social Security crisis that will threaten benefits for millions and put our most vulnerable at risk," Warren fumed via her Twitter account. "This is ridiculous. 233k people in MA receive Social Security disability benefits that could be threatened by these political games."

Advocacy groups like AARP and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare expressed outrage.

"It is difficult to believe that there is any purpose to this unprecedented change to House rules other than to cut benefits for Americans who have worked hard all their lives, paid into Social Security, and rely on their Social Security benefits, including disability, in order to survive," said Max Richtman, president of the NCPSSM, who also sent a letter to Congress expressing his concerns.

Like previous "stealth attacks" on Social Security, write Altman and Kingson, the small rule change shows "the groundwork is being laid in advance" for a larger attack on the program as a whole and described the tactics of Republicans determined to destroy the program, regardless of the costs, as "hostage-taking." In their analysis, the GOP ploy involves playing disparate groups within the system off one another with the ultimate goal of drastically reducing the program for everyone—current and future beneficiaries alike. They write:

One of the strengths of Social Security is its universality. It is based on the principle that we are stronger together. It is an old tactic of the program’s opponents to seek to divide and conquer. They seek to turn young against old by falsely claiming that too much is being spent on the old. They seek to turn African Americans against whites with the preposterous claim that Social Security is unfair to blacks. (We document and refute these and many other claims in our new book). This time they seek to drive a wedge between retired workers and disabled workers by claiming that reallocation helps the disabled at the expense of the old – another preposterous claim. All of these divide-and-conquer strategies are intended to turn Americans against each other so that all of their benefits can be cut.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) also condemned the rule, calling it not only contentious, but dangerous. "Re-allocation has never been controversial, but detractors working to privatize Social Security will do anything to manufacture a crisis out of a routine administrative function," Brown said in a statement. "Re-allocation is a routine housekeeping matter that has been used 11 times, including four times under Ronald Reagan. Modest re-allocation of payroll taxes would ensure solvency of both trust funds until 2033. But if House Republicans block reallocation, insurance for disabled Americans, veterans, and children could face severe cuts once the trust fund is exhausted in 2016."

For their part, Altman and Kingson said groups like Social Security Works and their allies will take this signal from the Republican Party and use it to re-energize their campaign to strengthen, not destroy, what they consider the single most successful social program in the nation's history.

"If senior, disability, workers, women’s, veterans, civil rights, faith-based and other groups stand together – as they have in opposition to privatization and recent benefit cut proposals," they concluded, "this stealth effort to pull apart our Social Security will be defeated. And if citizens from around the country let their representatives know that it’s time to expand Social Security to address the nation’s retirement income crisis, not cut it, all of us will be better off."

]]>Economic and Social JusticeSun, 11 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0500Government Spending on the Forbes 400 Compared with Government Spending on Kidshttp://www.pdamerica.org/component/k2/item/221-government-spending-on-the-forbes-400-compared-with-government-spending-on-kids
http://www.pdamerica.org/component/k2/item/221-government-spending-on-the-forbes-400-compared-with-government-spending-on-kids

It is a popular sport in policy circles to complain that the government spends so much more on seniors that it spends on kids. The gap between spending on seniors and spending on kids comes from taking average Social Security and Medicare benefits, along with some other programs, and showing that is vastly exceeds what we spend on kids. (The calculation usually leaves out state and local expenditures, which accounts for the bulk of education spending.)

The problem with this calculation is that seniors have paid for Social Security and Medicare benefits through the payroll taxes taken out of their paycheck over their working lifetime. According to calculations from the Urban Institute, the typical retiree pays more into Social Security than she can expect to get back in benefits.

There is a gap between the cost of Medicare benefits and the contributions made by a typical worker, but this is explained primarily by the excessive cost of health care in the United States. We pay more than twice as much per person for our health care as the average for other wealthy countries like Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This isn’t because we get better care, but because our providers – doctors, drug companies, medical equipment companies – get paid far more in the United States than in other countries. It seems a bit strange to be upset at seniors because our doctors get exorbitant salaries, but that’s politics in Washington.

Anyhow, since the fashion is to ignore that seniors paid into Social Security and Medicare, we can play the same game with the rich. The total wealth of the Forbes 400 comes to just under $2.3 trillion or roughly 3.0 percent of total national wealth. If we assume that the Forbes 400 have divided their wealth in the same proportion as the rest of the country, it would mean that they own roughly 3.0 percent of the government debt.

The federal government is projected to pay $231 billion in interest in 2014. The Forbes 400 share of this interest would come to $6.9 billion. That translates into $17.3 million for each of the richest families in the country.

The figure below compares the $17.3 million that we spend on the Forbes 400 with the$4,894 that we spend on the average child. What sort of country has this sort of imbalance between what it spends on its richest people compared to what it spends on its kids? (We can also note the racial imbalance – the rich are mostly white – as many of the seniors versus kids types are prone to do.)